Elden Ring. What a game. There’s not much anyone can write about it, at this point, that hasn’t already been written or said a thousand times. But here’s my thoughts anyways, buckle up it's a long one and fair warning it's full of spoilers!
I love the Souls series. Many years ago, I bought this niche little title that my friend found called Demon’s Souls. We played the hell out of it. It didn’t have a “PlayStation Best Seller” title yet, it was from this developer nobody really heard about. I had tried a Kingsfield game before, but I had no idea about the connection there.
How far it’s all come. Back then, spending over a hundred hours on multiple builds, co-oping and griefing and invading I never would have guessed that this formula would become the titan that it has. Of course, a lot has changed along the way.
I’ll stop with the puff and get to the meat and potatoes. Elden Ring is damn near the perfect Souls experience. There are elements of the Dark skeleton that translated seamlessly, the Bloodborne DNA worked itself in there too if you know how to spot it, and even Sekiro has left a fingerprint. It all culminates in so much more.
Character creation is standard fare, though at least recreating is super easy and free once you reach the Roundtable Hold and can inspect the mirror in Fia’s room. Once you’ve spent an hour or two making the perfect waifu material or a comedic nightmare creature out of Griffin McElroy’s wettest dreams you are invited to immediately die. That’s whether you manage to beat the Grafted Scion or not.
One of the most profound moments, that sticks in the memory, is what I like to call Elden Ring’s “Breath of the Wild reveal”. When you clear the tutorial (or ignore it) and ride up the elevator to the door that stands between you and the world. The vista that greets you is immense, majestic, and inviting. The sight of Erdtrees in the distance, a castle looming over the field, the sparkling golden Grace, and a guy who insults you for not knowing any ladies yet when you only just arrived, it’s all perfectly placed to get you amped up to explore.
And this is, of course, the absolute best part of Elden Ring. Exploration is pure joy. Finding tombs, caves, weird little nooks that are barely perceptible unless you’re really looking, each one of them packed with an adventure and a treasure, everything viable in one way or another even if it doesn’t pertain to your specific build. Nothing is useless, nothing is wasted. Who knew that the methodic and interconnected worlds of Souls games would translate so well when removed from their claustrophobic and woven tunnels and castles to large open fields? Of course, Torrent is a brilliant addition here, even if horse mounted combat is a bit clumsy.
Another moment that I’ll always remember is opening a nasty treasure chest that puffed a cloud in my face. When I awoke in an awful cave full of much stronger enemies and no fast travel available, I sprinted for the exit. My daring escape placed me on the banks of a Scarlet Rot swamp. It was a horrible place, just awful, and I immediately began exploring. I refused to fast travel. I decided I’d use the map and find my own way back. My first foray into Caelid was fantastic, it will likely be one of my favourite video game moments of the year.
What else works? The combat is fast, fluid, and the best in the series. Some Sekiro fans might disagree but as someone who never really connected with Sekiro’s one-size-fits-all approach to character progression I find it immensely refreshing to have a list of stats that I can build as I please, it’s great to have a choice how to play and somehow everything is balanced. It must have been agonizing for the team to somehow make this all work. Sure, magic might be generally “overpowered”, but it’s certainly not the ultimate answer to all combat questions and flexibility is key.
Beyond exploration and combat there’s a story in here that’s much more straight forward than previous Souls games while still having plenty of cryptic and weird lore notes to find and ponder on. There will be hundreds of hours of YouTube videos to consume and a ton of infighting over the meanings of item descriptions as people dig through the bounty here.
What doesn’t work so well is the NPC quests, which feels like a hold-over of previous titles that suffered for Elden Ring being so open. You can meet an NPC and start a quest and then lose track of them, perhaps you explore somewhere or beat a boss that sets a progress flag, and then you never find them again. You may forget about them, only to look them up later and still never find them, you’ve somehow broken the chain and now their quest is incompletable. You might also never even meet an NPC. From my own, personal experience, I never met Patches. Didn’t even know he was in the game. I didn’t organically find the cave he was in. I was over 100 hours in when I finally looked up where to get the recipe for Golden Fowl Feet, I saw where to find it, and I was surprised to hear he existed!
I rushed to the cave and all I found was a pile of items, his gear, and his Bell Bearing. This was very disappointing. I could go on, there are a few NPC quests that I broke without knowing how or why. A quest journal could have gone a long way to help players navigate, something to organize hints or to help players even without giving them quest icons like every other open world. Even something vague like “I heard these strange wolf howls in the forest, perhaps one of the merchants knows about this?” and it could be vague enough not to specifically mention Kale, but most players would jump to him, or perhaps when asked another merchant could point the player that way.
This type of NPC quest worked better in the older games due to their more linear nature, NPCs also generally followed the path of the player’s progress through an area, like Ostrava in Boletaria who would appear only there and in the Nexus. You knew where to look for him, even if you didn’t know his exact location, to progress his quest.
The other issue that really hampers the game is the health and damage bloat towards the end. Perhaps too much of the previous Souls game skeleton carried forwards, having over 40 VIT in any Souls game is redundant. This allows the player to broaden their specialization or to multispec at higher levels, or to cap a build at a generally accepted level for co-op and pvp. Elden Ring requires an absurd amount of health to survive unless you happen to be a dodge and parry god. And I say god because you’d have to be perfect, it’s not just big intimidating enemies that can one shot you if your VIT is low, the common knight will shred you to pieces if you’re not about 1500 health or more.
On a positive note, the areas of the map are fantastic playgrounds. Limgrave and the Weeping Peninsula are great fields and forests to ease players into the rhythm of the game. The boggy and mystical Liurnia is beautiful and terrifying all at once, Caelid is horrifying and evokes so much of late Bloodborne that it’s one of the stand out locations even if Rot is a pain to deal with. Atlus Plateau and Leyndell are majestic and sorrowful all at once while Mt Gelmir is intimidating and savage. The Mountaintop of the Giants is one of those really cool “snow levels” that gives variety and challenge, changing up the feel of the world while still offering its own interesting vistas and locales to poke around in.
The Consecrated Snowfield is bland and empty, the whiteout snow causes tension but is ultimately just a bother that’s easily negated by simply riding Torrent through. The Halig Tree is alright, but it is annoying to navigate due to the constant need to drop off branches and so on. Farum Azula is straight trash, a joyless mess, and a chore.
The bosses, the stars of any Souls game, are hot and cold. There are many stand outs, Godrick the Grafted, Rennala, and Morgott are great. Starscourge Radahn and Hoarax Loux are fantastic. Mohg and the Ancestor Spirits are really cool. Others are… Not so much. Rykard is boring, just another big sword with a wind attack boss to poke away at. Many bosses, especially in caves and tombs, are just “two of a thing” and are usually just a nuisance.
The real stinkers are Maliketh, Malenia, Radagon, Dragonlord Placidusax, and of course the Elden Beast. I know these are perhaps some people’s favourites and, by all means, enjoy them. I could not. Maliketh and Radagon seem to enjoy having area of effect attacks that hit you whether the actual attack lands or not. They love to hover in the air to try and bait out a roll and then lunge down at you. The trick is, if you don’t fall for it, you dodge them, but an AOE knocks you on your ass and punishes you anyhow. Punished for what? Seemingly nothing, you dodged the attack correctly, but I guess you’re meant to take damage whether you like it or not.
Dragonlord Placidusax, as well as Astel, have the remarkably annoying trait of simply teleporting around and sucker punching you with massively damaging moves. These aren’t impossible to deal with if you happen to spot them before they appear and they DO have a tell, however the damage is outrageous if they happen to catch you and it honestly feels less than fair if you’re having a good fight and dodging wild laser beam attacks and burning claws and grabs and gravity wells only to get destroyed by a “nothign personnel kid” teleport move.
I was so certain that Malenia was going to be the worst boss of the game in my opinion but that right goes to another. Maybe. She’s certainly a strong contender. Not only does she have moves that cause AOEs that can hit you regardless of whether you dodge, she heals herself each time she hits you. The trick here is that it still heals even if she hits your shield. Any contact and she gets a heal. She can also cause Scarlet Rot, which is just wonderful. The only saving grace is that she can be staggered relatively easily and if you’re not shy about using Bleed you can reduce the effect of her healing if you can keep yourself clear of rot.
Elden Beast is just abysmal though. Irredeemable. You’ve slogged through a hell of a journey, you’ve battled gods, legendary knights, beast, and demons. You’ve dealt with some of the hardest bosses in the entire series. You beat Radagon and get teleported to a beautiful arena that’s totally wasted on a big blob thing that runs away from you.
This is, to me, the purest definition of a wet fart ending. Is the Elden Beast hard? Not really. It’s incredibly cheesy, you do need a bit of luck to beat it, but boy is it a slog. As you begin slugging it out, fighting and dodging, it will dive below the water and spring up across the arena. Uh oh, now that it has distance on you the AI begins to spam spells. As you sprint towards it you burn off your stamina, hopefully you dodge its spell spam along the way or else you’ll need to have a quick drink, if you’re lucky you have enough stamina to land a hit or two. If you’re really lucky it won’t immediately dive under again and pop up back where you just sprinted from. Hope you liked dodging all those spells, ‘cause here they come again.
When I look back upon fights like Gwyn in Dark Souls 1 and how he punished you by getting in your face, grappling, and fighting with you, it was a real struggle. Nashandra was a tough fight, her spells and scythe made you zone her out and choose when to engage and dodge, but she never ran away from you. The Soul of Cinder was really cool, the phases where it used sorceries, miracles, and pyromancies to stop you in your tracks made for a unique and interesting battle to wrap up your quest. The Moon Presence and Gehrman are probably some of the coolest bosses in the entire series. Elden Beast is so far beneath all of these, it’s a sour note, flat and tepid, and perhaps the lowest point of the entire game. Mediocrity blanketed by nuisance and bother. Sad.
All of that said, the rocky road that is the final few bosses and areas don’t erase the rest of the game. Everything up to the Snowfield is solid. Everything that works well works incredibly well up to that point. It’s just a shame that so many of the low notes came one after the other to really sour the ending. Of course, personal mileage may vary, I’m sure there are those out there who find these points make the game better, but for me I just can’t see it.
Elden Ring is an interesting creature, it wears its DNA on its sleeve, but it is clearly evolved. Demon’s Souls crawled so Dark Souls could walk. Dark Souls walked so Bloodborne could run. Bloodborne ran so Elden Ring could soar. Sure, there’s some turbulence on the landing, but damn does it look majestic in flight.
